Compressor-Free Refrigerator On the Way

Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists from Penn State University are designing the future of refrigerators and other cooling devices through magnetic field refrigeration. The investigation pertaining to electrically induced heat effects of some ferroelectric polymers might one day replace electrically powered refrigerators and their compressors and coils. The researchers are focusing on ferroelectric polymers that exhibit temperature changes at room temperature under an electrical field. The same technology might also find its way into computers and other devices in the future, making them run cooler without complex cooling mechanisms."

Comments

Dupe

[ShadowRangerRIT]

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/10/2237223 And the first summary had more details.

Re:Dupe

[spun]

Congratulations! You have won the 'Find the Dupe on Slashdot' contest! To collect your prize, send your social security number, current address, and bank account information to me, the head of the International Find the Dupe on Slashdot contest. I will send you this lovely dinette set, a copy of the home game, and a NEW CAR!

Re:Dupe

[Daimanta]

This is a new feature on Slashdot. The same article is rehashed again and again each time using less and less information. Eventually the title will be "stuff" and the text will say "this matters". Furthermore it will be tagged with every previous tags and will cover every previous discussion on Slashdot ever.

Then ????????

Then comes the singularity.

Re:Dupe

[Egdiroh]

Wow slashdot's amazing, if you are to be believed and this is a dupe to an post made on 08/10/2008, then slashdot can see the future of the internet because the article linked to in this post is dated 09/11/2008. Freaky.

Don't dismiss new articles on previously covered topics out of hand. If you read what the ancient greeks wrote about the sky and stopped there, you would be pretty ignorant about the things we've learned since.

This isn't a dupe. It's a new article about a topic that has previously been discussed, and that's what your comment should say, instead of just calling it out as a dupe. Because by that logic your comment is a dupe because other people have posted other dupe comments for other topics.

Re:Dupe

[dgatwood]

Congratulations! You have won the 'Find the Dupe on Slashdot' contest! To collect your prize, send your social security number, current address, and bank account information to me, the head of the International Find the Dupe on Slashdot contest. I will send you this lovely dinette set, a copy of the home game, and a NEW CAR!

Oh,no, I fell for that once. I'm not falling for it again. You know what they say, fool me once, shame... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again.

Re:Dupe

[ajrs]

This is a new feature on Slashdot. The same article is rehashed again and again each time using less and less information. Eventually the title will be "stuff" and the text will say "this matters". Furthermore it will be tagged with every previous tags and will cover every previous discussion on Slashdot ever.

Then ????????

Then comes the profit!

Fixed that for you.

Re:Dupe

[ShadowRangerRIT]

I did read the linked article (albeit only skimming). It adds nothing to the original Slashdot story, since it is using the Penn State news item from the original Slashdot story as a source.

Perhaps I shouldn't have called dupe. After all, it was an inferior summary of a month old article. "Cheap knock-off" might be more accurate.

How energy efficient is this?

[mlts]

Yes, there are other ways to cool without a compressor, but they are in a lot of cases nowhere as energy efficient as the tried and true way of compression/evaporation. For example, peltiers can do cooling, but they take a lot more power and produce less temperature differential than the standard methods.

Magnetic cooling for computers?

[192939495969798999]

Yeah... you go ahead and use magnets to "cool" your computer. Let me know how that works out. For our younger readers: holding magnets close to food doesn't turn the food into a useless brick, but holding a magnet near a computer will probably do that.

Re:Magnetic cooling for computers?

[NemosomeN]

For our older readers: This is no longer the case.

Re:Magnetic cooling for computers?

[Mister Whirly]

For our younger readers: Stay off of my damn lawn!!

Re:Magnetic cooling for computers?

[sexconker]

Kraft Singles American cheese.

Unwrap, insert into floppy drive while it's still cool.

Perfect fit.
Impossible to eject.
Your "friend" will notice it when he tries to insert a floppy, or when it melts.
Hilarious.

If only Kraft made 12 cm discs of cheese...

My highly original thought on the subject

[MyLongNickName]

This could feasibly be used to make a practical air conditioner by having a segmented disk shape block that allows air to pass through.

Outside air would pass through one half of the disk that is currently energised (the electric field orders the polymer and thus releases heat).

The inside air would pass through the other half that is currently not energised (the relaxation of the electric field allows the material to absorb heat).

The disk rotates with segments shifting between the outside / inside halves, the electric field is applied by a simple electric comutation.

This is not a true "no moving parts" system but it has the potential to be an order of magnitude quieter than the current air conditioning units.

Re:My highly original thought on the subject

[MyLongNickName]

I'm not sure how close they come to reverse Carnot in a modern "fridge", but they are very durable. It seems like we had two refridgerators the whole time I was growing up, and the only reason we got the 2nd one was because we were in a different house. It's not exactly like they were being fixed all the time either. In fact, aside from the fact that the fridge we had when I was a kid required manual defrost, I don't think they ever required maintenance. The HVAC unit in my old condo had to be pulled. This was in 2006. When the tech opened it up, we discovered it was build in 1979. These units are essentially refrigerators too, with compressors. Now, that was a good old USA unit, with a steel housing and everything. I'm not sure if the cheapo plastic jobs they installed will hold up as well, but that's an implementation issue, not a problem inherent with the underlying tech.

The point is, can this new technology be as efficient as a compressor, as cheap as a compressor and as DURABLE as a compressor?

That said, perhaps it will find applications outside of keeping your OJ cool and your brow dry. If it does, great; but the current tech is pretty good. I wish they were silent, but even at that, a modern fridge is pretty quiet too.

Re:My highly original thought on the subject

[MyLongNickName]

TFA is written very poorly and describes a phenomena involving polymers that is already widely known. There are many examples. Here is one you can try using something far less exotic than the polymers mentioned in the article.

For this example, take a rubber band. Stretch it out. Touch the stretched rubber band to your lips. It will feel warm. Hold it in the stretched position for a few seconds to let it cool down to room temperature. Now let the rubber band relax, and once again touch it to your lips. You should now notice that it will feel cool.

The above process uses exactly the same principles described in TFA. Stretching the rubber band causes reduction of disorder by aligning the polymer chains. It also warms the rubber band because of the work applied. As you hold the rubber band in the stretched state it will cool to room temperature releasing some of the energy needed to heat it. This is equivalent to the step where the electrical field is applied.

Now release the rubber band. The polymer chains now revert back to a disordered state, cooling the rubber. Since the rubber band started in a stretched room temperature state the relaxed rubber band will now be below room temperature. this is equivalent to turning off the electric field as mentioned in the article.

Voila. This is a wonderful new refrigeration system that will replace all existing known cooling systems. NOT.

There are so many issues with practical application of this it is not funny. If these issues didn't exist we would have been using rubber band refrigerators for many decades already.

Also, please note that from a thermodynamics point of view this is essentially how a conventional refrigeration system works (albeit fat far more efficiently).

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vendors like Coleman have been selling solid-state peltier effect portable refrigerators for camping use for years.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not news, but not because it's solid state. It's because of the method used: ferroelectric polymers that exhibit temperature changes at room temperature under an electrical field, rather than the peltier effect.
That said, it's still a dupe.

Hmmmm ....

[gstoddart]

What I want to know is how this is affected by my huge collection of fridge magnets?

Will one more souvenir magnet from a trip cause my milk to spoil? Or will I have to thaw my mustard? :-P

Cheers

Re:More importantly,

[Anomalyst]

Just file down the large prong to fit in the narrow socket so you can plug it in with reverse polarity.